Moscow

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I've been in Moscow for 3 days now and I've only seen 2 English people, unfortunately they looked like tossers so I didn't speak to them. There are very few people who speak in English and nearly every sign is in Russian (Cyrillic) so it's really hard to know what anything is.
The hostel I am in is nice, but empty other than the four girls who seem to run the place. In my room there's one layabout who seems to be the boyfriend of one of the girls, and one other person who I haven't actually met yet as he's out before I wake up and asleep when I get back. The only other people I have seen there were some Aussies who were leaving as I arrived. I'm looking forward to having a normal conversation with someone who has English as a first language.
Moscow is as you'd expect - big, cold, corrupt. Everywhere you go you see big black Audis, BMWs, Mercs with blacked out windows and a private security guy stood next to it. On the 5 minute walk back to the hostel from here I'll expect to see at least 10 private security guys. You feel sorry for the police who have to drive around in crappy old Ladas which are about as modern as the ambulances, which appear to be transit vans, crappy old ones at that. I haven't been stopped by the police yet - I saw one guy get his papers checked but it's apparently mainly Ukranians, Chechnyans, etc that they look for. People keep talking to me in Russian so I can't stand out that much.
The Kremlin, Red Square and St Paul's Cathedral are all impressive but there isn't much else to see or do. The temperature is around minus 5 at the moment and it snowed just before I arrived which makes everything look really nice.

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Photos

Guy with mokeys
This was just plain weird

Parking Russian Style
If there's no parking place just stick your car on the pavement.

Disabled access - Russian style
Don't spoil the wheelchair bound with lifts - just stick a couple of ramps for them to wheel down. This was going into a subway, coming back up may be a problem.

Comments

[katie]

Uncle Bully
You go Uncle Bully!

[Linsey]

ways to keep warm
hey matt, just logged on this for the first time sounds like your having a good time already, just got back from budapest at the weekend so am offering sympathy for the cold weather and recommendations for keeping warm - simple really - large quantities of finlandia vodka - I have discovered a new talent for drinking it straight, must be the cold weather you know how teetotal I usually am. Sounds like you may already have discovered my little tip though judging by the photo's! Keep having fun - unlucky for me have to start work in the joyous location of Sunderland on tuesday...hmmmm not convinced I've done the right thing!

[Deano]

You are the Monkey man
Is that not you with the fur hood with the monkeys?

[Megan]

Monkey man
Ha! I thought that was you holding the monkey, too! And whats so weird about that...can't monkey's wear parkas too?

[Anna]

Dear Matt! I'm upset you to have so negative impression about Moscow! What about English and Russian, you visited Russia where the native language is Russian as in France - French, Italy - Italian, etc. So, don't be surprise when you arrive to any country and there is everything written by native language. I visited last year Italy, there nobody speaks English! But you could see names of streets and metro stations written Russian and English both. The second one is your foto with unknown Cathedral - it is Church of St. Vasiliy. If you want to answer me and argue you are welcome to ICQ 198189868. Best regards, Anna from Russia, Moscow.

[Bellcore]

Thanks for your comments Anna, I think you're being a little paranoid and you read through the blog again - you'll notice that I said the language was hard to understand, which it is - it wasn't a criticism of Moscow. I'm not sure why you think I was surprised everything was in the native language. And it's not really the same as French and Italian as they use the Roman alphabet so you can work a lot of words out.